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Gore gives Nobel Prize proceeds to Palo Alto nonprofit

Original post made
on Oct 12, 2007

Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize Tuesday, announced in Palo Alto this morning he will donate the proceeds to a Palo Alto-based nonprofit group he founded United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He made the announcement at the nonprofit's Hawthorne Ave. office this morning in front of a room packed shoulder-to-shoulder with photographers, videographers and reporters.

Gore can use the non-profit staus of the group to cover causes and expenses that he would, otherwise, need to use his own post tax money on. In other words, he just avoided paying income taxes on his $1.5 prize.

Gore lives in a huge house that uses more energy in a month than the average US homeowner does in a year. (He air conditions his indoor swimming pool!) He flies around the world on private jets, and as the Weekly's mention of his idling limo points out, he's not all that careful with his energy.

I think the Climate Warming problem is real. But I'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling us it's a crisis start acting like it.

Gore is a big hypocrite - even if he has some good points on climate problems.

Posted by John
a resident of College Terrace
on Oct 12, 2007 at 12:59 pm

If Norway is going to decide the Nobel Peace Prize in favor of global climate change, it should at least stop pumping oil from the North Sea. All of that oil ends up being CO2 emmissions. Time for them to walk the walk.

Posted by Marvin
a resident of Charleston Gardens
on Oct 12, 2007 at 1:32 pm

There is hope for all of us now--if someone like Al Gore can win a Nobel Peace Prize, then we have a chance also.
Maybe one has to have the personality of a large appliance to impress the folks in Sweden.

Giving the Nobel Prize to Luddites is spitting at the memory of Nobel. He intended the prize be given to the developers of beneficial technologies.
It's interesting the announcement came a day after the High Court of London pointed out errors in Gore's movie.

Posted by commuter
a resident of another community
on Oct 12, 2007 at 3:19 pm

He should have taken Caltrain this morning down to PA from his pad in SF. I like Gore and voted for him in 2000 and would vote for him again, but I don't think a person who has overpopulated the earth by siring four children is the best spokesmodel for the environment.

Posted by Straight Facts
a resident of Stanford
on Oct 12, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Actually, the facts about Gore's energy use by the poster above are mostly right. Al Gore installed solar Panels on his house only AFTER he was exposed as an energy hog. While it is true that he has now signed up for a Renewable Energy program - much like Palo Alto's Green program - for electricity, about half of his home energy use comes from natural gas - which isn't "renewable".

Even the Renewable Energy program he uses doesn't really do much to reduce CO2 emissions since all electricity is fungible, and no matter how its generated is still put into the same system with all other electricity. Renewable Energy programs don't really displace conventional sources. (However his solar panels do.)

The idea that one can atone for egregious Greenhouse Gas emissions through offsets is very problematical. First, there is very much dispute whether the offsets really make up for the emissions that their promoters say they do. And even if they do all that their backers claim, Al Gore still is engaging in activities that pour tons of gasses into the atmosphere when he flies - by private jet or commercial first class. If the Climate situation is really an emergency, as he said today it is at his Palo Alto Appearance, then shouldn't he be staying home avoiding all these jet flight related emissions AND doing what he can to offset the carbon being spewed into the air from all sources besides?

Finally, Al Gore pays for his offsets through a profit making company he is heavily invested in. SO in some senses he pays himself to atone for his warming sins.

Gore says a lot of things that stimulate needed debate on this issue, but the poster above is largely right: when it comes to action, he's a big fat hypocrite.

Gore is about making himself rich, AND providing a context to raise taxes for governmental control worldwide. At the same time, he condemns poor countries from taking the path to becoming wealthy countries. I think he IS sincere about his beliefs (and they are beliefs) about global warming, but he refuses to endorse the one big answer to that problem (IF it is a problem): Nuclear power.

It is fine to attack a source, but you should then, also, attempt to attack the sources within the soure, among which is the IPCC, which shared the NP with Gore:

"Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes."

RS, it might be better to consider Gore's actual stated "science", and then try to defend it. Most scientists have a real hard time doing that.

Or, even better, try reading this report ( not for the light-minded) and/or watching the movie that goes with it( by an actual climatologist)

www.aconvenientfiction.com

The Nobel "Peace" prize had lost its way with Arafat, and nothing since has changed its way. The relevance of the Nobel Peace prize is equal to the UN.

The great joke is that the even a COURT in ENGLAND ( though what the heck a Court is doing talking about the scientific basis of a movie...oh yes, because the GOVT of England wanted to force feed it to its kids!!..just the right function of a govt) has acknowledged errors in it, and since the making of the propoganda piece, it has become world-wide knowledge that Mars has melting ice ( clearly caused by those nasty civilized democracies here on earth.

Posted by Why is anyone surprised?
a resident of Nixon School
on Oct 12, 2007 at 4:57 pm

I hope nobody is actually surprised. The moment we heard that Gore was nominated for this "award" because of the movie, we all knew it was inevitable. We have to remember WHO is making these decisions!

We shouldn't even waste time talking about it. In fact, now i am sorry I did.

Posted by Anonomus
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Oct 12, 2007 at 10:44 pm

I believe or have heard Al has several Mansion houses.

I have heard he inherited a tin mine that pollutes a river ,but it is grandfathered in so the pollution is fine. He makes about $75,000 a year profit from it.

I don't think he had much to do about the background on the movie. Just collected other peoples work to put in the movie.

If he is concerned about global warming he should work on the C0 2 problem that the commuters to Palo Alto add to the air every day. It's ironic that he comes here where on our population basis we are a city that pollutes the air with CO2 more than any other bay area city. He should come up with a "fix" for that problem.

Posted by OhlonePar
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 13, 2007 at 1:53 am

What a joke,

Do you have any sources that aren't, say, partially funded by Exxon?

If there's a lack of scientific consensus about global warming, then you should be able to find sources that aren't described as "conservative think tanks" and don't take money from vested interests such as big oil companies.

You should be able to quote sources that aren't described as "liberal think tanks" and don't take government grant money. Why is research performed by workers who must come up with a pressing problem in order to get their next grant more objective than those using oil money?

Posted by RS
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 13, 2007 at 11:07 am

"Why is research performed by workers who must come up with a pressing problem in order to get their next grant more objective than those using oil money?"

On the surface it may not be, but look into the Heartland Institute specifically. They have a reported history of taking money from clients to distribute opinion pieces. They dont do research, they just lobby for paying customers. So in the past they have apparently argued against the dangers of tobacco for their customer, Phillip Morris. They have not done research to back up their claims, they have just written and distributed opinion pieces to newspapers and law makers.

So if I saw the oil company paying them millions and they set up labs that did scientific research and the research was written up and peer reviewed and reproduced, I would find their opinions credible. Instead it looks like to me that they are just basically a PR firm with a fancy name hiding behind a 501(C3) status. It also looks like they are willing to misrepresent things, unless one believes tabacco's harmful effects were not well known in 1993 when they started taking the money.

Dont get me wrong, I think there are holes in Al's film especially when it comes to the predictions, but Heartland is a good resource to refute them.

Also I think there are other compelling reasons to conserve energy other than global warming, so even if one does not buy into it consider the other beneficial aspects of using less energy by conserving and using renewable resources.

Posted by Gene
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 13, 2007 at 12:55 pm

"If there's a lack of scientific consensus about global warming, then you should be able to find sources that aren't described as "conservative think tanks" and don't take money from vested interests such as big oil companies."

I would assume that those of you who think that a financial interest in the subject renders suspect the claims of people opining on Global Warming are ready to discount Al Gore's Nobel award since he is earning tons of money giving speeches, on his documentary and through the company he invests in that sells carbon offsets.

Posted by OhlonePar
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 13, 2007 at 1:49 pm

R. Wray,

I'm not making a decisive statement. Last time I checked though, the government was not a private for-profit corporation whose stock price would be affected by the global-warming controversy.

Bias is an issue that's always worth looking at. I always like to look at multiple sources when it comes to complex subjects.

I'm not defending the film, by the way--I haven't seen it. I like to look at more than one viewpoint--but the two sources cited had the same bias problem. Now, if there'd been a consensus even though one was funded by Exxon and the other, say, by a solar power consortium, that would have been interesting.

Gene,

Thank you--that's exactly the sort of thing I want to see. I don't agree with the all the conclusions drawn--the guy's a meteorologist, not a business or political expert, but I feel like I'm reading an honest, informed opinion, not one with a hidden agenda.

From what I can see, there's a consensus that the planet's heating up. Then there's a debate about how much is caused by humans (though a scientific majority does think man-made emissions are a factor) and how severe and rapid the changes are going to be.

Unfortunately, I don't find the little news stories written up from various science-group press releases very reassuring on that score. Things like, yep, the ocean's rising and we can't do anything about it. And, oops, the changes seem to be happening faster than we first estimated.

I'd feel differently if say those press releases came from the pontoon-house builder's trade group, but they don't.

It's also not real reassuring when you read about climate change and history. Lenzner dismisses the effects of climate on disease vectors, but if you read about the Black Death, you'll see that the period's repeated epidemics *were* linked to a period of unusually warm and rainy weather. Hygiene didn't change, but the weather did, creating good times for disease insects and rodents. Warm, wet weather is great for mosquitos--to say, as Lenzner implies, that we should just wreck a few ecosystems with DDT to compensate for the spread of malaria (via mosquitoes) strikes me as sort of missing the point.

Posted by Mike
a resident of College Terrace
on Oct 13, 2007 at 7:00 pm

Wray,

Where is the macroeconomic (demand-supply) research that underlies your assumption?

That said, we do know that the stock of naysayers rises easily, when the latter make statements against the common grain, especially if it makes people comfortable, and feeling like they don't have to change.

Posted by OhlonePar
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 13, 2007 at 7:58 pm

R. Wray,

City government's don't have stock and I see no indication that concerns about global warning are doing anything to increase tax revenues. So your comparison of the figurative to the literal situation of an Exxon doesn't strike me as really convincing or even worth remembering.

OP,
One definition of "stock" is "personal reputation or status".
Mike,
Here's a reference for you, Web Link. It's links reference the the Antarctica ice is increasing. So what? The global warming computer programs predict a temperature increase of a few degrees over 100 years. Do you really think that that's going to cause the Arctic ice to melt in one season. It's much more likely that is natural ocean current changes.

Posted by Mike
a resident of College Terrace
on Oct 14, 2007 at 12:07 am

Wray, I've read a lot of this stuff, including some ofo Allegere's work.

Allegre is right, there is no way to 100% prove that global warming is taking place; in the proper scientific tradition, hypothetical information is always open to being shown as erroneous.

Here's the problem for your side: The GREAT weight of evidence that we are going through a period of warming, and that that warming is affected by human activity, is overwhelming.
This isn't to say that this great weight of information won't be shown to be wrong.

That said, I'll go with the current way of thinking - i.e. that our environment is in trouble.

Why shouldn't anyone who has read ALL the evidence in these matter decide the same.

Would Allegre make the claim that Co2 load is good for the environment? I don't think so.

Thus, even if Gore and other are wrong, it would serve us all well to reduce pollution. There are many benefits to doing so.

Posted by trudy
a resident of Crescent Park
on Oct 14, 2007 at 7:02 am

I see yet more rightwing wingnut claims.

Gore is donating the -entire- portion of his prize, which by the way is half the prize, since there is a co-awardee, so why the heck should he pay taxes on something he is giving away to a non-profit?

I guess now that 99% of people know Gore never claimed to invent the Internet and he -was- instrumental in funding it, the wingnuts have turned to bogus claims abut his own energy use, carefully omitting the fact that the Gore house also includes office space and equipment for three organizations and the Secret Service.

Posted by Rightwing wingnut
a resident of South of Midtown
on Oct 14, 2007 at 7:22 am

Trudy, as a rightwing-wingnut, I can see that you are typical in the leftwing wingnut arena..clueless in reality. You clearly have no clue how taxes work..you mean if I earn $200,000/year and give it all away to a non-profit I shouldn't pay any taxes on it? PLEASE, I beg you, get that put into the Tax Code!

If you don't understand that much, how do you expect to feel confident in understanding hard scientific interpretations? If I were you, I would learn more and talk less.

Posted by Rightwing wingnut
a resident of South of Midtown
on Oct 14, 2007 at 7:26 am

R Wray- most computer models have errors in assumptions which have blown even the one year predictions off the chart. I pay no attention to them..most of them don't even pretend to put into place anything to do with the solar cylce, nor with the water vapor level in the air, both of which have the majority to do with our climate, and nothing to do with people.

I bring this up because of your "so what" comment making me think the computer models are even valid, which I have noted on other threads you already know to not be true, but which people new to this topic may not have heard before.

R-wingnut, I don't believe the computer programs. My point was that even in the viros own terms, it doesn't make sense to ascribe short term, isolated weather conditions to overall, 100-year, global effects.

OP, you don't believe that our Mayor's personal reputation and status (i.e., stock) is increased in the eyes of many or most of our citizens because of her alleged urgent fight against global warming? For her, it's better than seeing that our garbage is collected.

Mike, CO2 is not pollution. I agree that pollution is not good, but I don't think it is necessary to bring down our economy to reduce it.

Posted by OhlonePar
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 14, 2007 at 2:39 pm

R Wray,

Oh so now it's the mayor, not the city government being compared to Exxon? More and more metaphorical. The comparison just doesn't hold. In the grand scheme of things, Exxon's a lot more powerful than our mayor. I don't think she's funding any grants or think tanks.

Gene,

Thanks for the link, but this guy comes off as a little disgruntled--retired guy whose not getting grant money anymore. It's unclear whether this is because of a big, bad conspiracy or that he's retired. I mean shouldn't he be getting money under Bush, since Gore's been out of office since 2000?

And, also it's kind of in keeping with a general desire to not want anything as serious as global warming might be to be attributable to human action. The nature of the interview means we don't really get the info behind what the guy thinks, only that he thinks it. So, it's interesting, but not convincing in and of itself.

I am starting with the gray beards first. You said you wanted skeptics without oil compnay connections, so I am giving them to you. I have many more. I will provide the young Turks in the future.

The older guys are disgruntled, but probably not for the reasons you suggest. They just think it is nonsense, and nonsense with a political/econmonic agenda. They were trained to look at facts...they resent that current climate science works within an agenda.

OP,
I'm not being metaphorical. It's reality. If the mayor and city council pass a law or regulation, you are forced to abide by it. If you install a new wood-burning fireplace, you will be fined or sent to jail.
You are confused about the difference between government power and economic power. The government has police power to fine or jail (or more). Economic power is not force. The most Exxon can do to you is stop producing its products, and you can refrain from buying their products or stock.

Posted by OhlonePar
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 14, 2007 at 5:32 pm

Gene,

The first guy you sent me, said, yes, global warming was happening. He just disputed the cause. But there wasn't anything in the article that got into why his disagreement carried particular weight.

The Bryson is better, but he also seems to be a big theorizer, who's changed his mind. He also declares that we haven't had a big increase in CO2 emissions in the last 100 years, which is demonstrably wrong. I noted, also, in one blog that his work was always focused on local rather than global climate change.

So, sure it's worth putting his views in the pot--but which views? The views he expressed before retirement--when he warned of man-made climate change, or the ones later?

Wray,

Sorry, dude, still not cutting it. Business interests have a loonnnggg history of determining government action. Locally and globally.

Posted by OhlonePar
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 14, 2007 at 8:04 pm

Gene,

Just for hell of it, I looked at Wikipedia's global warming article. Just a cursory look at it (and its list of skeptics) showed things that your skeptics ignore.

Take Bryson, for example, his claim is that the fluctuation is normal, akin a warm period in the Middle Ages. However, a quick dash over to the Wikipedia site and there's a graph that shows those historical fluctuations--and the current one skyrockets past the one during the Middle Ages, which also looks to have been Europe-specific.

Bryson reminds me a lot of paleoanthropologists who base theories of evolution that put their own findings dead-center in importance.

So, I'm going to quit playing here. Wikipedia also has a nice list of global warming skeptics, so I can hunt there if I wish. Looks to me, that the scientific community does think there's anthropogenic global warming and the skeptics, well, if I can find the holes via a quick Google then there's a problem.

I suspect some claims *are* overblown, that's usually the way it is with public debates, but when I crosscheck your guys, I'm not finding myself convinced.

"Take Bryson, for example, his claim is that the fluctuation is normal, akin a warm period in the Middle Ages. However, a quick dash over to the Wikipedia site and there's a graph that shows those historical fluctuations--and the current one skyrockets past the one during the Middle Ages, which also looks to have been Europe-specific."

OP,

Take another look. That "skyrocket" is a single year (2004) value...not a smoothed decadal value, like all the other values. When smoothed, the temperature values look very similar to natural flucuations.

Gene, you beat me to it. I was just going to write that back to OP. That is the problem with at least one graph that I can remember from the Gore propoganda piece..a graph which has an elongated end-graph time line to make it look like the recent history is so much more alarming than prior history.

Real scientists shudder at this tripe.

By the way, as for money and scientists..the best money to be had is in "proving' people are responsible for global warming ( although, now the correct term to account for some parts of the earth actually cooling is "climate change"). Grants flow like water for this agenda. Grants dry up for a scientist if he/she doesn't tow the party line.

I can't put my cursor on the right web-site right now, but maybe somebody else has it at his fingertips...I remember a great article somewhere about the economics of grants and how much more money flows into trying to prove anthropogenic warming than into actual inquisitive science concerning global climate change.

If anyone is truly interested in the science, I will gather up the titles for you to read and make up your own mind..titles of good science articles, books, and even one documentary ( though that might be the one that was already dismissed because the money for it came from Pacific Research Institute...money that is so much dirtier than money coming from Gore's institute) for you to make up your own mind.

OP,
You must be kidding; the Third World's economies are the most controlled. Try to open a hot dog stand in any of them and you would see. (But it's almost as difficult to open one here, and we are catching up with them.)
You're very pragmatic so forget any theory and just look at the negative correlation between the amount an economy is controlled and the country's wealth and economy progress. (BTW, there is good theory also that economy freedom is good.)

Posted by eric
a resident of Mountain View
on Oct 15, 2007 at 11:17 am

OhlonePar and others,

May I suggest that you leave the flat-earth, head in the sand crowd alone? Would you debate whether the earth rotates around the sun? Of course not.

Debating conclusive science with people that counter with non-peer reviewed opinion pieces, discredited studies and wishful thinking is pointless, and only prolongs a "debate" that should be long ended.

Posted by Mike
a resident of College Terrace
on Oct 15, 2007 at 11:33 am

eris is right, the weight of evidence supports everything that Gore says. Lots of people didn't think that Relativity theory was right, either. Look at them now. Maybe they've moved on to environmental theory. :)

Posted by Dave
a resident of Professorville
on Oct 15, 2007 at 11:51 am

Time will tell whether Gore is correct. On balance, it seems that (within the large margins of uncertainty necessarily involved in this kind of prediction), he is.

My biggest issue with Gore is that HE doesn't seem to believe his own rhetoric. At his Palo Alto appearance, he labeled the climate "crisis" an emergency. But what are we to think of someone who says this "emergency" the biggest threat to the planet in history, and yet can't seem to keep his own energy use at only one of his mansions under 20 times the average American household's use. And who uses private planes to jet around the world giving speeches. (And I don't buy the trope that it's ok to burn a lot of fossil fuels as long as you purchase offsets. If this is a dire emergency, we should all curtail energy use AND do what we can to reduce atmospheric carbon, like purchase offsets.)

Gore's inability to cut his own CO2 emissions points to the unlikelihood of a political strategy that will reduce global co2 emissions enough to make a difference in any future global warming.

This fact makes those who say a better strategy would be to make sure the economy is not damaged by ineffective attempts at carbon reduction so that we have a rich enough society to deal with the effects of global warming when they occur.

Posted by Dave
a resident of Professorville
on Oct 15, 2007 at 12:04 pm

Maybe he could fly commercial - like the rest of us. Maybe he could teleconference more. Maybe he could figure out a way to travel less. Maybe he could do some of the things that he expects the rest of us to do to combat co2 emissions.

Posted by The hilarious hypocrite
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 15, 2007 at 12:31 pm

Why does he need to move around the country or the world for that matter, at all? He invented the idea for the funds to be taken from taxpayers to fund the scientist who researched the method of moving electrons through telephone lines to bring us what we know of today as the internet or intra-nets depending on you political perspective of that concept. Therefore he is an avant-garde, blue-blood tax spending academician in his own mind. Therefore Al Gore (AKA Gomer Pyle Gump) should sit in his Tennessee mansion that is powered by fossil fuel with a minor supply of solar and nuclear and telecommute and teleconference. As demonstrated in the pictures below. Al Gore's office here: Web Link Look Closer: Web Link My goodness how much power does that take? The hilarious hypocrite

Posted by Dave
a resident of Professorville
on Oct 15, 2007 at 12:45 pm

Who cares about Gore's wealth? I don't know how rich he is, but rich or poor, if someone is going to tell us about an "emergency" involving the future of mankind, he has the obligation to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. On that score he fails.

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